Happy Turkey Day!

Exile, Prejudice, Victory: A Jewish Thanksgiving Story From the New World

The story of Asser Levy and the first Jews in New Amsterdam

How American Jews Adopted—and Adapted—Thanksgiving

Special synagogue services may be a thing of the past but otherwise observing the holiday helped Jews feel like at one with the turkey-loving nation

As Thanksgiving Approaches, Advice on Gluttony From Maimonides

The great rabbi and doctor advised laxatives before the meal, exercise after, and no chickpeas

Thanksgiving, the Pilgrims’ American Jewish Holiday

How the biblical narrative of Exodus helped shape the founders’ idea of a secular nation with liberty for all

Saying ‘Shehechiyanu’ on Thanksgiving

This holiday, read I Say Shehechiyanu, a new children’s picture book that can help your family tolerate the inevitable mishegas

Treat a Lone Soldier to a Thanksgiving Dinner

A bar in Jerusalem provides Americans in the IDF with warm Thanksgiving meals, but this year, they need some help. Want to do a Thanksgiving mitzvah?

A Jewish Leader at the First Thanksgiving

Colonial cantor Gershom Mendes Seixas was a George Washington favorite

The post The Jewciest Thanksgiving Reads appeared first on Jewcy.

For hours on Monday night after the announcement that Darren Wilson would not be indicted, I stared at my computer screen feeling as though no language could be adequate. My heart was and still is with the expressions of grief, shock, outrage and solidarity. Each post in my Facebook feed offered something of that ilk: a poem by Langston Hughes, clips of Michael Brown Sr. and Lesley McSpadden urging “positive change,” quotes from Atticus Finch and James Baldwin. Simple expressions of sadness hit hardest.

Every so often, disagreement would flash across comment threads—but it seemed designed to provoke, usually to troll.

I tried to imagine those who were unsure, who didn’t live in an echo chamber of either ilk, not getting constant reinforcement from either script, that “black lives matter” or that the a police officer had lawfully killed a violent thug.

Twenty hours remained before I was due to board my flight home to Cleveland for the Thanksgiving holiday. I knew that I was bound to encounter someone just that unsure—maybe a cousin, a high school acquaintance, or a neighbor. I knew we’d be even more likely to talk about the deaths of black people at the hands of police, with a family member on staff at the school that was attended by Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy shot and killed by the Cleveland police after waving a toy gun.

That’s the Thanksgiving trope: gathered around a picturesque table laden with food and beatific expressions of gratitude, somehow all the fissures and disagreements, personal and political, that lurk beneath the familiar façade find a way to leach into the dinner talk. Were we going to shout our slogans, condemn loved ones’ inadvertent condoning of racism and targeted police violence? What happens after we demand that our less social-justice-oriented family members adopt our frame of mind, and then they disappoint us with their ambivalence? Some awkward passing of the Ocean Spray cranberry sauce and a desultory goodbye kiss on the cheek?

I thought about the Passover seder, how, while the wise child and the rebellious child are having it out over their strongly-formed opinions, Jews are still obligated to make space for the simple child, who asks only, “what is this?” and for the one who does not even know how to ask a question. What follows is the best response I could brainstorm (originally posted on Facebook).

Presumably the grand jury deliberated on evidence, conflicting accounts, information presented on all sides as “the facts.” In fact, reports show they may have been provided with an overabundance of evidence, an unusually voluminous document dump of the type usually reserved for trials.

There must be, I can only assume, legally compelling reasons for not indicting this officer. “The jurors had to consider whether Officer Wilson acted within the limits of the lethal-force law,” according to the New York Times, and evidently they did.

But there were legally compelling reasons to acquit George Zimmerman, and the officers who beat Rodney King. We have yet to find out what actions if any will be taken against the officers who killed Eric Garner, Akai Gurley, or Ezell Ford. With Darren Wilson, the decision to decline indictment is tantamount to saying Mike Brown’s death, along with others, did not require any retribution or response.

The arguments that every one of these acts, to say nothing of hundreds more, were done in self-defense implies that, black men always represent potential criminality and lethal threat—even when they are found (too late) to be unarmed. When, each time, the law condones use of lethal force against black men, when there are no consequences for actions that result in death, the message to those who kill is: “You did the right thing.”

The result: black men are 21 times more likely to be killed by police than white ones.

If you are confused or intimidated by people’s outrage, anger and sadness: we are not “making” race an issue. We are naming the central role that race plays in civilian deaths at the hands of police officers. Deaths that represent lives so insignificant that their loss does not warrant a trial—these deaths only happen to black men.

To insist on examining each of these strictly on a case-by-case basis only illustrates a larger point: that there are a seemingly inexhaustible number of legal rationales for killing a black man.

Every time our juries, our police forces, our judges and our media, paid for by our taxes and our consumerism—condone the notion that some people’s lives really are just that insignificant, we bring ourselves closer to that same judgment. This matters for you. Black Lives Matter FOR. YOU.

When speaking to Jewish family, I recalled a sermon from Rosh Hashanah called Ferguson/Fargesn, about the mandate for Jews to remember that it was us who were “stopped and frisked” –

“If anyone could identify with young men magically deemed pathologically criminal for no other reason save their ethnicity, it would be Jews… Now we are not the ram in the story of Isaac’s sacrifice. We can be the angels, who are not afraid, who speak for God – “don’t put a hand on the boy!”

Amy Schiller writes about politics, feminism, philanthropy, and pop culture. Her work has appeared in The Nation, Salon, The Daily Beast, and The American Prospect. Her website is amybessschiller.com. Follow her on Twitter here.

(Image: Scott Olson/Getty)

The post Talking About Michael Brown, Social Justice, and Why #BlackLivesMatter This Thanksgiving appeared first on Jewcy.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg is recovering in hospital after a small heart procedure, The New York Times reports.

Last night, the supreme court justice experienced some discomfort during a routine workout and was taken to MedStar Washington Hospital Center in Washington, D.C. (Ginsburg actually shares a trainer with Elena Kagan, who says the 81-year-old stalwart “has the best jab-cross-hook-punch combination on the federal bench.”) According to a supreme court statement, she is “resting comfortably” after having a stent placed in her right coronary artery this morning, and should be home in time for Thanksgiving.

In recent years there have been calls for Justice Ginsberg’s resignation, but she vows to continue working “as long as I can do the job full-steam.” To wit: she pulled an all-nighter on October 17 writing a dissent on the court’s decision to uphold Texas’ strict voter ID laws. Kenahora.

Refuah shlemah, Justice Ginsburg!

Update, November 27: Justice Ginsburg has been released from hospital, so she’ll be home just in time to gift some of her Notorious RBG t-shirts to Thanksgiving guests.

The post Ruth Bader Ginsburg Recovering in Hospital After Heart Procedure appeared first on Jewcy.

Drew Lerman is a writer and cartoonist living in Miami. Zeke Turner is a freelance reporter based in Berlin. They met in college after Drew published a controversial comic in the student newspaper and Zeke wrote a column in his defense.

The post Eight Days of Leftovers appeared first on Jewcy.

For years, foreigners have watched perplexing news footage of turkey-stuffed Americans fighting one another for a Tickle Me Elmo at their local Walmart. And while they used to laugh superiorly at the discount insanity, many other countries are now joining in— namely, Israel. Yes, the Holy Land has taken a liking to our Black Friday and Cyber Monday ways. The times they are a-changin’, the Jerusalem Post reports.

“Cyber Monday started in America, but Israeli consumers see the opportunity and want to participate in shopping holidays, so they were looking for great deals online,” said Elad Goldenberg, the Israel manager for eBay, which offers special shipping rates and discounts.

“The rates of purchasing are doubling year after year.”

For the holiday spree, Israeli newspapers are publishing top 10 lists for the best deals around. Online shipping services are providing Israelis with special rates for deliveries. Sorry, America. No longer can you hog all the holiday shopping mania. Cheaper MacBooks for all! It’s what the pilgrims, and the chalutzim, would have wanted.

Though Israel is not alone in its Cyber Monday madness, it is one of the strongest adopters. According to Business News Daily, in 2012 Israelis spent seven times their average daily purchases over Black Friday weekend, tied with Ireland, and behind Colombia, where shopping ballooned to 11 times normal spending. Mexico, South Korea, Russia and China all showed inflated spending as well. All in all, international sales from US retailers tripled from the previous year.

Happy Thanksgiving.

(Photo by K2 images/Shutterstock)

The post Israel Loves Black Friday and Cyber Monday appeared first on Jewcy.

As a child growing up in suburban Connecticut, I was never a fan of any particular holiday. A notoriously picky eater, I was horrified by Thanksgiving, with its table full of mushy delicacies comprised of indistinguishable ingredients. Halloween always incited an existential struggle—I remember one year I wanted to be a geisha, but when I saw my fat face slathered in garish white paint, I realized with an unnerving clarity that I could never escape myself.

Easter and 4th of July were benign days spent at the country club nibbling on cold salmon or watching fireworks, respectively, and while it was always great to approach one’s bounty on Christmas morning, the rest of the day felt sad and empty after the presents were unwrapped. One year in particular, my brothers and I voraciously tore through our gifts like rabid baby animals, only to find that we had managed to complete Christmas in 20 minutes. The aftermath was the child’s version of a hangover: exhaustion, confusion, and shame at the human lust you revealed.

But there was always one holy day I lived for, one glorious evening in February when the most special people in the universe came out to shine their light on the rest of us: Oscar Night. Even before I was old enough to see the movies nominated for Best Picture, I anxiously settled in front of the television and watched with glee as the stars sauntered down the red carpet outside the Kodak Theater.

I envied them their long, flowing gowns, public acclaim, and the easy camaraderie with which they interacted with other chosen folk. I began taking theater classes at eight years old, and started spending Oscar night commercial breaks practicing my Best Actress acceptance speech while staring at myself in the bathroom mirror. (I’d deal with the distaste for costumes later.) When Anna Paquin, just a year my elder, won Best Supporting Actress in 1994, I was filled with hot envy as she panted nervously through her acceptance speech.

Though I’ve long abandoned the dream of ever receiving an Oscar nod, I’ve maintained my yearly ritual of watching the ceremony. Every year, I hole up at a girlfriend’s house, and we drink red wine and eat pizza and declare outfits horrible or amazing, rarely in between. We place bets on who will win what, and decry the Academy’s gross oversights when our favorites don’t nab the gold statue. To miss even a moment—including less exciting categories like “sound mixing” or “visual effects”—would be unthinkable.

So imagine my chagrin when I realized that this year, the Oscars will air on the 24th of February, also known the 14th day of the month of Adar, when Jews celebrate Purim. As the holiday approached, I received invitations to three events: the first a Megillah reading on Saturday night, the second a full-scale circus on Sunday afternoon (plus Megillah, round two), and the final one, a concert-cum-schmooze-fest starting at 8:30 p.m. on Sunday evening, which cuts seriously into Oscar-viewing time.

You might wonder, based on my references to the Christian celebrations of my youth, why that would be an issue at all, or why I wouldn’t just say “no” to one event and be satisfied with a single Megillah reading and a hamantaschen or two. Couldn’t I easily fit in at least the red carpet? But fact is that I have been steeped in Jewish learning for more than a year now, and I find myself feeling like this is a larger choice than it seems on the surface—one not of scheduling but of spiritual allegiance. Which is more important to me: old traditions or new?

My process started quietly—first it was a fascination with the Hasidim who walk the city streets alongside me, then an interest in the rich and varied literature, and finally a desire to kiss the mezuzah and say the Shema. I began writing about Jewish issues and events in New York City basically as an excuse to insert myself into Jewish environments, and every bit of learning I did, from Hebrew classes to memorizing prayers, I passed off as educational endeavors that would help advance my career.

It was a while before I could admit to myself, let alone anyone else, that all this study was about something deep in my heart, not a general exercise in cultural anthropology, and that what I wanted wasn’t just to observe and comment on Jewish life, but to live it. I wanted to convert to Judaism. Even today, I fear the reaction when I admit this pursuit of mine. Will people make assumptions about me, and why I’m choosing to make this change? Will they scoff in disbelief that I can do the difficult work that conversion entails?

But we know that on Purim, we commemorate that Esther—whose name is derived from the Hebrew satar, which means hidden—revealed her Jewish identity to her husband, the king, and saved the Jewish people from certain slaughter. If she can be brave in the face of death, then certainly I can be too in far less dire circumstances.

This Sunday, I emerge from the want-to-convert closet and declare proudly that my priorities are Jewish ones and my soul a neshama. It’s a small exchange I’m making—a secular costume party for a religious one, a feast of glamour for a feast of tradition, but for me, it feels defining. Instead of critiquing diamond accessories and filling out ballots, I will throw my lot in with the people I love.

Now if I could only decide what to wear…

(Image via Featureflash / Shutterstock.com)

***

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The post Trading in My Academy Awards Tradition For a New One: Purim appeared first on Jewcy.

• Krakow made Conde Nast Traveler’s list of top 10 cities in the Europe, earning an 89.3 rating for ambience. [CN Traveler]

• Gary Shteyngart, who was roasted at BAM last night, refers to his first novel as The Russian Debutante’s Handjob. We knew we liked him. [Entertainment Weekly]

• Jonathan Adler has a nanny, whatever. [Bon Appetit]

• For only $23.5 million, you can buy Madonna’s Central Park West apartment (Kabbalah string sold separately). [NY Daily News]

• Chelsea Clinton is reportedly trying to make a baby with king of the nebbishes Marc Mezvinsky [The Cut]

• We’re thankful for Larry David’s animated video about Thanksgiving in Brooklyn. “Rosie, would you sit down please?” [Funny or Die]

The post Daily Jewce: Krakow Wins Big, Larry David’s Brooklyn Thanksgiving appeared first on Jewcy.

There’s something special about sitting around once a year and simply being grateful. Just as the pilgrims observed the day to give thanks for their safe arrival in a new world, Jewish immigrants and their descendants can, and have, easily latched onto that idea. While not all Jews in America observe the holiday, my family Thanksgiving has always been seen as a chance to show our pride in being American.

Like countless other Eastern European Jews, my great grandfather wanted to leave his home and move to the United States. He made a pit-stop in Havana, Cuba to wait for his visa, but quickly fell in love with the country. He and the rest of my family stayed until Fidel Castro came into power and then they finally headed over to Miami (with a short detour in Brooklyn).

There are small traits that mark my family as new Americans and descendants of immigrants. First, we take voting very seriously. Second, we have a history of fairly traditional views on gender roles and curfews. Third, like every good immigrant family, we treasure our culinary inheritance. At least once a week, usually on Shabbat, we feast on a classic dish from Cuba, Romania, or Hungary. But no meal fuses these two parts of my family’s story like Thanksgiving dinner.

My whole extended family eats Shabbat dinner together at least once or twice a month. We rotate houses, and thus cooks and cuisines, but the format is basically the same. When Thanksgiving comes around, we gather around the table and awkwardly wait for Kiddush to start before realizing that it’s not, in fact, Shabbat.

In researching her book, Jewish Cooking in America, Joan Nathan interviewed a number of Jewish Cubans (also known as Jewbans), who regularly returned to the theme of Thanksgiving, the “real melting pot.” A typical Jewish-Cuban Thanksgiving “includes a roasted turkey as the centerpiece surrounded by cranberry sauce, plantains, rice, black beans … with pumpkin pie for dessert.” This is more or less a description of nearly every Thanksgiving I’ve ever celebrated (at least, the ones I can remember).

Like the typical American Thanksgiving, turkey is the main entree, but this is no ordinary American turkey. It’s not carved at the table with a flourish or deep fried. It’s not dry and sandpapery, doesn’t require greasy gravy, thick with fat. So maybe it’s not as photogenic as those whole glistening birds that belong in a Norman Rockwell painting, but it is juicy, flavorful, and a star in its own right.

Using citrus juice and carving the turkey half-way through the cooking process allows the turkey to retain flavor and moisture. Cutting the turkey in the kitchen also adds a secret reward—there is nothing so delicious as using your fingers to pick bits of meat straight off the bone. Plus, this is one of those rare dishes that actually tastes better after being defrosted and reheated, so you can make it in advance without panicking. It’s also great on a sandwich for lunch the next day. I think the pilgrims would have been impressed with that kind of thrift.

Not Your Bubbe’s Cuban Turkey
Serves 8-10 people

Ingredients

15 lb whole turkey
1 tbs Lawry’s season salt (enough to cover surface of turkey)
1 tsp paprika
1/4 cup fresh-squeezed lime juice (about 2 limes)
1/4 cup fresh-squeezed lemon juice (about 2 lemons)
1/2 cup orange juice
1/2 cup vino seco (white cooking wine)
4 cloves garlic, chopped

Special Equipment

Cooking bag

Directions:

1. Heat oven to 350 degrees.

2. Wash turkey and season inside and out with Lawry’s and paprika. Place turkey in a cooking bag.

3. Mix lemons, limes, orange juice, and wine (about two cups total) and pour over and inside the turkey. Rub garlic over turkey and leave the pieces under the skin.

4. Cook for about two and a half hours (or follow directions on cooking bag based on turkey’s weight). Then take the turkey out of the bag and cut the legs while still hot so that the skin does not stick. Slice the entire turkey and place in a large pan. Pour liquid through a colander and over the turkey.

5. Cook for one more hour, covered. Continue to cook, uncovered, for 15 minutes.

Also try:

Not Your Bubbe’s Stuffed Cabbage Kugel

Not Your Bubbe’s Squash Pie

Not Your Bubbe’s Kasha Mac and Cheese

The post Not Your Bubbe’s Recipe: Cuban Thanksgiving Turkey appeared first on Jewcy.

You never know when it’ll happen, and when it does you never know how to react. You’ll be innocently sitting at a table, minding your own business, when someone hands you a bowl of death.

Excuse me, I mean a bowl of kasha varnishkas.

I’m sorry, but I really can’t be polite about this. Kasha varnishkas are grey like death, taste like death, and getting the bits of it out of your teeth kills your afternoon. I’ve never heard someone say ‘mmm hand me that kasha varnishkas,’ or ‘I know what would make this meal better, kasha varnishkas.’ To be completely honest I’m not quiet sure why this is a classic Jewish dish. But it is.

Every Thanksgiving, my grandmother’s festive lunch meant the one time a year my family was invited to her house and she served food. If you were wondering, by serving food I mean she called up the local kosher deli and had them set up the works. By the time we arrived, I was always starving. After dodging some hugs and kisses, I wanted to do what all good Americans do: dig in and eat. Being that we were the only people in our extended family that kept kosher, everyone was handed their own plate made out of the flimsiest paper known to mankind and directed to the table covered in takeout boxes. Part of growing up is getting covered in physical and emotional scars. The memory of desperately chewing kasha varnishkas with the same happy expression a cat has as it nibbles on its hairball makes me realize those Thanksgiving lunches provided me with both. Ultimately my difficult upbringing and the challenges of digesting reheated kosher deli takeout made me want to make a kid-friendly version of kasha varnishkas that I’d happily eat today as an overgrown child.

Arthur Schwartz, a former instructor at the Culinary Institute of America and the author of countless food-related books, says that kasha means cereal in Russian and varnishkas’ root is the Ukrainian word for a filled dumpling. Perhaps this got lost in translation and somewhere along the lines the ancestors of Jewish cuisine turned it into the traditional dish found in kosher deli’s to this very day: kasha, or buckwheat groats, and varnishkas, or bowtie pastas. If this doesn’t sound appetizing enough, proper kasha varnishkas is made with chicken fat. That’s right the fat of a chicken. Nothing says yummy in my tummy quiet like chicken lard.

I guess you could say I didn’t decide that this recipe needs to be rebooted, the universe did.

I mean seriously, chicken fat.

That was clearly the first thing to go, and it was replaced by sticky heart-stopping cheddar cheese, making it much more colorful than its black-and-white predecessor. This dish, which can be found all over the Jewish culinary scene, gets a lot of its flavor from an onion—that’s why in this version we use both red and white ones. In order to give this recipe a bit of a bite, and in hopes of making macaroni and cheese good for your body as well as your soul, I added some peppers.

Anyone who has tasted the classic version of this dish knows how strong of a taste the kasha has. It more or less flavors everything and leaves a little nasty something in between your teeth, which makes you taste the kasha varnishkas long after you’ve finished chewing. In order to make the strong taste a bit friendlier I sprinkled it on top of the dish with fresh coriander and garlic—with this kasha, you’ll be glad to be tasting it long after you’re done.

Not Your Bubbe’s Kasha Varnishka
Serves 6-8

Ingredients:
1\4 cup unsalted butter
Salt and pepper to taste
1\2 medium onion, sliced
3 tbsp flour
1 red pepper, sliced into thin strips
1 yellow pepper, sliced into thin strips
1 hot pepper, diced
1 red onion, sliced into thin strips
3 1\3 cups milk full fat
2 1\2 cups shredded cheddar cheese,
1 lb bowtie pasta
3\4 cup kasha
1\4 diced fresh cilantro
5 garlic cloves, minced

Directions:

1. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees and boil a medium pot of water.

2. Melt your butter in a large pot over a medium heat.

3. Once your butter starts to melt add the onion and salt and pepper to taste. Let them cook until it begins to soften.

4. Slowly add your flour to the pot and mix until the contents thicken.

5. Gradually, about 1\4 of a cup at a time, add the milk. Before each addition let the sauce thicken considerably and whisk constantly.

6. Once you have added all the milk, let your sauce simmer over a medium heat for 7 minutes.

7. Add the rest of your vegetables, and let the sauce simmer for another 3-5 minutes.

8. While the sauce is thickening, cook your pasta in the boiling water. Cook it 90 percent of the way you normally would because it will continue cooking in the sauce and in the oven. (If you’re not sure how long to cook it for, read the pasta’s package. There should be a suggested amount of cooking time. Let your pasta cook for a few minutes less than they suggest.)

9. As you wait for everything to cook, combine your kasha, cilantro, and garlic cloves in a small bowl. Set aside until later.

10. Once the sauce has thickened, gradually add the cheese and let each addition melt before adding any more cheese.

11. After adding all your cheese, toss your pasta into the sauce and stir it around in the pot.

12. Spray a large baking dish and pour your pasta and sauce inside.

13. Sprinkle the top of the pasta and cheese with its kasha crust.

14. Bake on the top rack for 10-12 minutes.

Also try:

Not Your Bubbe’s Honey Chiffon Cake

Not Your Bubbe’s Kibbeh Agemono

Not Your Bubbe’s Borscht Salad

The post Not Your Bubbe’s Recipe: Kasha Mac and Cheese appeared first on Jewcy.

This article originally appeared at Repair the World.

Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the holiday season. It is also one of the most popular day of the year to serve in the country’s soup kitchens and food pantries. Anyone who has watched a local news broadcast after an afternoon of turkey (or Tofurky) and football has seen the footage of volunteers spooning out stuffing and yams to the homeless and hungry in all across the country.

While this is a great way to serve a group that most certainly needs it, most of the Thanksgiving and Christmas volunteer slots are filled months before the leaves even start turning colors, as Joel Roth, the executive director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger noted back in October when he addressed the audience gathered at New York’s headquarters (where he spoke alongside Shirley Sagawa). Also, these opportunities are difficult to come by since many soup kitchens are closed for the holiday. So what do you do if you didn’t plan to volunteer far enough in advance?

As the holiday volunteering page on NYCCAH’s website notes, poor people’s needs for food and services do not abate when Thanksgiving (or Christmas) is over. “Hunger is an important issue that needs much help throughout the year, especially in New York City where more than 1.4 million people are food insecure.”

There are ample opportunities to serve on the other days of the year and many of the city’s food pantries and soup kitchens are frequently under-assisted. Through their Volunteer Matching page, you can find the best opportunities for the other 363 days a year. And if you want to get a head start on another federal holiday, you can sign up for NYCCAH’s MLK Day Serve-a-Thon, which will aid a variety of anti-hunger projects including preparing and serving food to the community, repainting food pantries and school cafeterias, and cleaning and reorganizing pantry and kitchen spaces.

So enjoy your Thanksgiving with your friends and family. But before the tryptophan (or its tofu equivalent) starts to lull you into a peaceful, contented sleep, think about the service you can do when the holiday ends.

The post Fighting Hunger On Thanksgiving And The Other 364 Days Of The Year appeared first on Jewcy.